FLASHBACK: Emily Youcis Describes How She Came to Embrace White Nationalism

In early November, cartoonist Emily Youcis appeared on the white power podcast Radio 3Fourteen to discuss how she became a white nationalist. This was shortly before she attended the recent NPI conference in Washington, D.C. where she gave interviews and was filmed being attacked by Antifa protesters who sprayed attendees with an unknown, foul-smelling substance.

Youcis is the creator of the online show Alfred Alfer, which began on Newgrounds in (according to IMDB) 2006. She also worked as a vendor at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, where her claim to fame was selling pistachios, something we’ll revisit a bit later.

Lana Lokteff asked Youcis what led her “down the path to the dark side,” as it were. Youcis began by discussing her early years living in a “diverse area” — a phrase she said in a tone of voice meant to mock the stereotypical Jewish accent. She claims to have been bullied for a number of years as a child, and had few friends. Much of this abuse, she claims, was directed at her because she was one of the few white students in her class. She said that she remembers hating herself “for being white” as a result.

She also said she had a “deep, deep longing” for her own “culture” and “roots,” but was taught by the “Jew-constructed media” that she had none. “From a young age, the Jews got me good,” she explained.

While a teenager she became “obsessed with World War II,” and often went to the library to borrow books on the Bolshevik Revolution and Adolf Hitler. At that point she decided that Communism was untenable — or “retarded” in her words — and came to the conclusion that “all the Commies were Jews.”

Eventually, Youcis made her way to /pol/ — a hotbed of racism and conspiracy theories — and began to focus on the Jews. For a while she focused on the threat posed by Muslims, but said that “we wouldn’t have this problem, we wouldn’t have the open borders going on if it wasn’t for the Jewish people.” “At this point we just want any of these invaders out, or people that are tribally working against us, out of the way,” said Lokteff.

What made her go “full fash,” in Youcis’ words, was her preparation for a (scrapped) series of interviews on the alt-right by NBC News. Youcis stumbled on Lana Lokteff’s video critiquing Milo Yiannopoulos’ watered-down views of the alt-right (in other words, the movement minus the white nationalist element) and said she felt a “shock all over” herself.

From that point she began watching more episodes of Red Ice Radio, and then moved to the virulently anti-Semitic website The Right Stuff (TRS). She logged into the Discord app and found the r/The_Donald chatroom, then went to the chatrooms for /pol/, TRS, and Stormfront. “So I was on the TRS Discord for a while — really nice guys — and then they set me up with a forum account, and I started reading The Daily Stormer, and I think that’s when I made the final leap.”

So, after this interview for Radio 3Fourteen, Youcis — who was still going by her nickname “Pistachio Girl” — attended the 2016 NPI conference along with the likes of Richard Spencer, Matt Forney, and Jared Taylor. After the conference was over and videos of her attendance circulated on social media, philly.com writer Will Bunch contacted Youcis as part of an article he was writing about her.

In Bunch’s article she was quoted as saying the alt-right is a “white identity movement” and that “This doesn’t mean that we hate anybody — we simply want to find our own identity as Americans … as white Americans, and find our own culture.” As far as the alt-right goes, pretty tame stuff. This was somewhat undermined by Bunch pointing out that Youcis retweeted David Duke and followed accounts like “Fight White Genocide.”

By December, Youcis had been fired for her openly white nationalist views, and made another appearance on Lokteff’s show to talk about it:

On the one hand, I see no point to firing people for repugnant views unless it would impact how they do their jobs. For example, if Youcis were a police officer instead of a snack vendor. It won’t convince them to change their minds or make them better people; in fact it will probably cause their views to be more deeply entrenched. On the other, at least from a marketing standpoint, Aramark — her former employer — felt that it had a duty to fire her in order to make sure that their name wasn’t synonymous with white supremacy in the public eye.

Lokteff (and others on Twitter) have encouraged Youcis to seek legal counsel, and perhaps launch a lawsuit against Aramark. It’s unclear what the basis for such a suit would be, unless she had a viable claim under her contract. There’s certainly no basis for a discrimination suit, contrary to what some alt-right Twitter users have suggested, since her firing was based on her racial views and not her race per se.

In other words, Aramark would be well within its rights to terminate an employee for praising American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell (1918-1967):